tutor

interventionist

early years educator

paraprofessional

elementary school teacher

Chapter One

1. The onboarding process was incredibly long (almost 2 months).

2. Very minimal training, and no shadowing on-site during our first day. Felt thrown into the deep end without any support.

3. The hours are not as advertised. Job posting said 8-12, but we were given unpaid breaks and were clocking in barely 3 hours.

4. The school required key fobs for every door, including bathrooms. Chapter One did not advocate for us to the school district as to why the ELIs should have keys. Was consistently late to my classrooms and could not reliably access bathrooms due to lack of keyfob.

5. Expected to conference at recess in the elements, where kids were incredibly distracted.

6. Inconsistent information across the board. We were told to do things one way and were then expected to completely change methods at the drop of a hat.  I was using a conferencing method out of my Chapter One binder and was then told by an IC that I was “doing it wrong.”

7. Numerous cases of unprofessional management. This was my first year in a classroom, and I got very sick twice. Was expected to provide a doctor’s note to a company that did not provide me with health insurance. Was sent snarky emails by HR when I refused to do so.

8. I felt as though the company was very comfortable using intimidation tactics to try and get employees to do something. E.g., they threatened my job for missing sick days & not providing a doctors note, and our IC told us that it’s “on her” if we do something wrong, and that we better make sure “we are doing our jobs right.”

9. My IC scheduled last-minute meetings and would frequently show up late or have to “respond to an email” during our meeting time.

10. I had multiple difficult classroom experiences and was offered no support when I reached out; rather, I was met with ChatGPT generated emails.

11. Emails to my management would regularly go days without response/unanswered.

12. Poor, last-minute planning for our end-of-year testing. 

13. At least one instance where Chapter One advised submitting erroneous data for a particular classroom, as to not show regression with a large number of the students.

Beware before accepting a role here.
I was told in two interviews and again by the district manager that I’d be assigned to a school within 30 minutes of home. Based on that, I left another job and completed onboarding. There was a rush to get onboarding, orientation, and training done and was told I’d start next week, and then next week, and then the week after that. There was always an excuse. It took two months (longer for others who were hired sooner), and we had to pay for our own background checks. When my assignment came, it was an hour away in rush-hour traffic, with a schedule I couldn’t set — two paid hours, an unpaid gap, then two more hours.

By the time I started, I was expected to redo 20+ hours of training on my own time because so much time had passed. Then it turns out that the school didn’t need the hours I was promised, and they were going to cut my hours to just 2–3 hours a day. Based on conversations with others, all of us were having the same or similar issues and felt mislead in interviews.

I wish someone had warned me: the promises made during hiring weren’t guaranteed, and I ended up quitting due to unmet expectations. High turnover here seems to reflect deeper management issues.

The mission of this place is great. You work between 1-5 hours a day tutoring kids 1:1. Helping the kids read and watching them improve was so great and I genuinely liked the day to day part of the job. It was also really flexible. Unfortunately, the management is poor. You’re left to your own devices most of the time. The training is poor and there’s work outside of your hours that they don’t pay you for. There is no company culture. They also will forcibly clock you out if you work over even a  minute over your scheduled hours or have a short break in between conferencing (but you’re still at the school). They only allow 10 days off (not paid) and you must only take 1 day off a month and no consecutive days or else they threaten to fire you. Mind you, this is a job where you need a college degree. They just didn’t seem to care about their employees and many ELI’s would come in and then leave. Even the teachers told me they noticed the amount of revolving ELI’s.

What is the best part of working at the company?
The schedule-mornings and early afternoons 

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
Meeting “student fidelity”, basically having to present and sell the program to administration, being expected to find time to attend teacher’s team level meetings 

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Depends on the school you’re assigned to. Mine was friendly and very welcoming.

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Show up at school, go to your assigned classes and work with the students

What is the best part of working at the company?
My co-workers and students. Each day we worked together as a team to fulfill the company's mission of giving students a choice-filled life by providing reading support to the school. 

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
There wasn't any stress. Each day the students happily participated in skill-building activities.  

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Everyone is excited and upbeat!

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
I began each day by performing one-on-one reading assessments and skill-building activities. I worked four and a half hours a day.

Great nonprofit with a wonderful mission to advance literacy for young children in primarily urban school districs. Good for self-starters, highly motivated people as you work totally on your own. You should have a background in education or working with school-based personnel as that is who you will serve -- teachers and principals. Loved this job and would have stayed forever, but they cut my full-time role back to part-time status so I had to move on. :(

Self training modules are clumsy and unrealistic. Poorly designed and maintained proprietary software. The company targets under served school districts to sell a phonics coaching program. Schools buy it unwittingly to get their test scores up. Reporting process is 30 years out of date. After 2 years of COVID, most students are not classroom ready. Multiple emails from management group every day, so that an employee is actually working off the clock every day. Pressure to meet a metric in trauma, noisy and chaotic schools.

Direct management was great most of the time, but it seems that the company is moving towards caring more about numbers, money, and business etc. Definitely have seen that shift over the years. Employees are unceremoniously let go as well, doesn't seem like they care too much in that regard either.  The emails I've seen when people are let go seem to be copied and pasted in random fonts. 

That being said, working with the kids has been amazing, the best part of the job. Seeing their growth is very fulfilling and rewarding. 

What is the best part of working at the company?
eLI-The students were the best part working here. The one on one was the best opportunity for me to interact with the students and see growth.

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
Making sure to see the lost amount of students in a day.

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Great.. very supportive. Many of the other Early learning interventionist were very helpful in sharing ideas.

Management is beyond poor and unprofessional. 
The job itself isn't hard; you work with the students on building literacy skills for a brief period several times a week. But please understand that management will LEAVE YOU ON YOUR OWN. The only time they responded to emails is when I was calling out sick.  

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Tutor 61 salaries reported	$26.89 per hour
Interventionist 36 salaries reported	$26.08 per hour
Early years educator 45 salaries reported	$25.83 per hour
Paraprofessional 12 salaries reported	$25.00 per hour
Elementary school teacher 7 salaries reported	$26.07 per hour

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